Lou Assist for User Behavior Analysis: Features, Pricing, and Review
Looking for an effective user behavior analysis tool and wondering if Lou Assist is the best option for your SaaS company?
With numerous Lou Assist alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.
In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Lou Assist is the ideal choice for your user behavior analysis needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR
- Lou Assist is a good choice for user behavior analysis and it comes with features such as in-app events, feature tags, user journey mapping, and user segmentation analysis.
- Lou Assist is an attractive product adoption platform with versatile in-app experiences and a freemium option to boot, yet its limitations in certain use cases may prompt you to look elsewhere:
- Product Analytics: Lou Assist doesn’t have any product usage analytics capabilities. This means that its dashboards can only show you engagement metrics for content and experiences you’ve built within the Lou Assist platform rather than actual product analytics.
- International Users: Those with an international user base will be better served by other adoption platforms on the market. Lou Assist lacks any localization capabilities which makes creating in-app experiences for different languages a time-consuming hassle.
- Mobile Onboarding: Because Lou Assist is designed to be used on web apps rather than mobile apps, it has no compatibility with products developed for mobile platforms. If you’re developing a mobile app then consider alternatives like Appcues or Pendo.
- If you’re looking for a better option for user behavior analysis, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Lou Assist.
- Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful user behavior analysis capabilities firsthand.
Looking for a Better Alternative for User Behavior Analysis? Try Userpilot
What is Lou Assist?
Lou Assist is a product adoption tool built by the customer success platform Totango. It lets product teams add in-app guidance in the form of modals, tooltips, hotspots, banners, and highlights that can be built without writing any code.
Additionally, Lou Assist helps product teams collect feedback from their users by adding surveys within in-app experiences or creating NPS surveys to measure loyalty/advocacy.
Those who upgrade to the paid version of Lou Assist can also utilize its integrations with 14 third-party tools.
Must have features of user behavior analysis tools
User behavior analytics tools are critical for improving product performance by providing an overview of user interactions and influencing strategic decisions. Here’s what to consider before opting for one:
- Event tracking – so you can track user behavior and activity.
- Goal-based tracking for keeping track of how users make progress toward a goal and identifying bottlenecks.
- User journey tracking and mapping – so you can monitor user engagement across different touch points of the customer journey.
- Behavioral heat maps for visualizing user interactions with heat maps that highlight popular and underutilized UI areas (i.e. feature heat maps).
- Segmentation based on in-app behavior, usage patterns, feedback, and personas — to create personalized, well-timed messages.
- Features to create automated in-app experiences, such as interactive in-app messages and announcements based on specific user actions that offer timely guidance.
Lou Assist features for user behavior analysis
Behavioral analytics give you a better understanding of user behavior so you can make decisions based on how customers actually use your product. Lou Assist doesn’t have a dedicated behavioral analytics dashboard but it does have features and integrations that can be applied to this use case.
Here’s an overview of Lou Assist’s behavioral analytics capabilities:
- Checklists: Lou Assist checklists help you interpret user behavior by seeing which tasks they complete versus which tasks get skipped (and how long completion takes). Unfortunately, you can only have one checklist active at a time on the entry-level Startup plan ($79/month).
- A/B Testing: Lou Assist also has A/B testing functionality that can help you compare user behavior between a control group and a group who have been shown an in-app experience. For instance, you can see what percentage of users completed a goal after completing a tour.
- Integrations: Lou Assist does have a third-party integration that allows it to receive user traits from Segment (a customer data platform with behavioral segmentation capabilities). However, this is a one-way integration that can only receive data from Segment but not send data back.
Note: Third-party integrations are only available on the Startup plan ($79/month) of Lou Assist or higher.
Lou Assist’s in-app events
Event tracking is incredibly important for identifying usage patterns, understanding user behavior, and extracting actionable insights from product data.
Lou Assist lets you track events by copying code snippets, attaching triggers to elements, and integrating third-party analytics tools. It currently doesn’t support feature tags like other more advanced tools like Userpilot.
Here’s how you can use Lou Assist as an event-tracking tool:
- Tracking Snippet: In-app event tracking can be accomplished by copying Lou Assist’s tracking snippet — LOU.track(’Event Name’). You can also use the Segment integration to go code-free but you’d need to upgrade to paid.
- Event Triggers: You can also trigger events and experiences when users interact with an element. Interactions include clicking on the element or hovering over it.
- Analytics Integrations: Lou Assist has integrations with popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap, Segment, Google Analytics, and more. Unfortunately, these are all one-way integrations that can only listen for Lou Assist events but not send data back (except Segment).
Note: Third-party integrations are only available on the Startup plan ($79/month) of Lou Assist or higher.
Lou Assist’s feature tags
Lou Assist doesn’t have any product usage/adoption or feature tagging capabilities. This means you won’t be able to use the solution to tag your features and monitor interactions. It does have integrations with third-party analytics tools, but these are only for sending Lou Assist-based events.
Note: These one-way integrations with analytics tools are only available on the Startup plan ($79/month) of Lou Assist or higher.
Lou Assist’s user journey mapping
Lou Assist doesn’t have any user journey mapping capabilities within its native feature set. It does have third-party integrations with analytics tools, but these are one-way integrations (meaning you can only send data from Lou Assist but not the other way around).
Note: Third-party integrations are only available on the Startup plan ($79/month) of Lou Assist or higher.
Lou Assist’s user segmentation analysis
User segmentation is incredibly helpful for personalizing experiences and comparing data between different groups. Lou Assist helps you analyze customer data through user properties, turnkey segments, and A/B testing dashboards.
Here’s an overview of Lou Assist’s segmentation analysis capabilities:
- User Properties: Lou Assist tracks user properties such as page views, sessions, language, browser name/version, checklists viewed/completed, and experiences viewed/completed/quit. There’s also a property for user IDs that you can use for more granular tracking or targeting.
- Turnkey Segments: The platform comes with four preset “turnkey segments” that can be used to target all users, new users, returning, and power users, respectively. Going to the “Segments” dashboard will help you see the number of users in each segment at a glance.
- No event or feedback segmentation: You can’t segment users based on their in-app activity or NPS responses.
Note: The “All Users” segment only includes users who have visited your product after you installed the Lou Assist snippet and, as such, may exclude some inactive customers.
What are the pros and cons of Lou Assist?
Lou Assist’s pros
There are plenty of benefits to using Lou Assist, but the most notable are its unlimited capacity freemium plan, diverse array of UI patterns, and advanced targeting settings:
- Unlimited MAUs: The free version of Lou Assist doesn’t cap the number of monthly active users (MAUs) you can have on your platform. This stands in contrast to competitors like Pendo, which force customers to upgrade to a paid plan once they hit the 500 MAUs limit.
- UI Patterns: There’s a wide variety of UI patterns to choose from when building in-app experiences with Lou Assist. You can add modals, tooltips, hotspots, banners, and highlights, then adjust their design or positioning as needed.
- Targeting Settings: Lou Assist can target based on which segment a user is in, what page they’re on, and whether or not they’ve already completed the experience before. You can also adjust launch priority and frequency settings to dictate which experiences should appear or how often.
Lou Assist’s cons
Of course, Lou Assist has its fair share of drawbacks as well — and some of these cons even hinder or negate the benefits the platform has to offer:
- Analytics Dashboards: While Lou Assist does have analytics dashboards that can show you how in-app experiences, checklists, or surveys are performing, it only measures the performance of content created within the platform. There are no product usage analytics dashboards.
- Freemium Limitations: Despite the uncapped MAUs, the free version of Lou Assist has quite a few limitations. You’ll only be able to publish one tour, checklist, and survey at a time. You’ll also be limited to two announcements and won’t be able to create custom themes.
- Segment Caps: Lou Assist’s advanced targeting is hindered by the segmentation limits imposed by its pricing structure. Users on the free version can only create one custom segment, while those on the entry-level Startup plan can only create three.
Note: You can create unlimited segments if you subscribe to the Growth plan or higher but that tier starts at $239/month.
What do users say about Lou Assist?
Lou Assist users praised the flexibility that its various UI patterns provide, as well as the customizability that each in-app experience offers:
“It allows you to create different types of onboarding experiences for any kind of SaaS product, it feels well-categorized and provides a nice degree of customization.”
Some customers were disappointed by the lack of personalization and localization offered on Lou Assist, along with the inconsistent product experience caused by numerous bugs:
“Personalization is not deep enough, I encounter many many many bugs when editing modals. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and it is very frustrating. Language is not supported so I have to make different modals for all my international users.”
Lou Assist’s pricing
Lou Assist has a free version that supports unlimited MAUs as well as three paid plans that can accommodate 2,500 to 10,000+ MAUs. The paid subscriptions range from $79/month on the entry-level Startup plan (with the annual discount) to $239/month for the Growth plan.
Here’s a closer look at each Lou Assist plan:
- Free: The Free plan doesn’t limit the number of monthly active users but does cap the number of tours, checklists, surveys, and announcements you publish. You won’t be able to use third-party integrations or create custom themes either.
- Startup: Starting at $79/month, it offers three team sets and can accommodate up to 2,500 MAUs. You’ll be able to publish unlimited tours/announcements but only one checklist and three surveys at a time.
- Growth: The Growth plan starts at $239/month (or $199/month if you pay annually) and increases your subscription’s capacity to 10,000 MAUs. You’ll also get 10 team sets and be able to publish an unlimited number of tours, checklists, surveys, and announcements.
- Enterprise: Lou Assist’s Enterprise tier operates on a quote-based pricing system but offers flexible MAU limits and unlimited team seats. You’ll also get a custom service-level agreement (SLA). Enterprise subscriptions have no monthly payment option, so you’ll need to pay annually.
3 Reasons why you might need a Lou Assist alternative
Lou Assist is an attractive product adoption platform with versatile in-app experiences and a freemium option to boot, yet its limitations in certain use cases may prompt you to look elsewhere:
- Product Analytics: Lou Assist doesn’t have any product usage analytics capabilities. This means that its dashboards can only show you engagement metrics for content and experiences you’ve built within the Lou Assist platform rather than actual product analytics.
- International Users: Those with an international user base will be better served by other adoption platforms on the market. Lou Assist lacks any localization capabilities which makes creating in-app experiences for different languages a time-consuming hassle.
- Mobile Onboarding: Because Lou Assist is designed to be used on web apps rather than mobile apps, it has no compatibility with products developed for mobile platforms. If you’re developing a mobile app then consider alternatives like Appcues or Pendo.
Note: Lou Assist is able to adjust screen sizes when your web app is viewed on mobile devices.
Userpilot – A better alternative for user behavior analysis
Behavioral analytics make it possible to monitor user activity, group data into cohorts, and extract relevant metrics/insights. Userpilot lets you tag features to see how users interact with them, compare goals by cohort, and create trend reports that track behavioral patterns over time.
Here are some Userpilot features you can use for user behavior tracking:
- No-Code Feature Tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you mark features, buttons, and elements with the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to track user interactions such as clicks, hovers, or inputs to get an accurate behavioral view for specific features.
- Funnel Reports: Funnel reports show you the total number of users that enter a funnel and the percentage of users that complete each step. This can help you track behavioral paths and see which stages most users get stuck on.
- Trends Reports: Generating trends reports will help you visualize the occurrence of key events over time and break down these analytics by device, browser, operating system, country, signup date, or even individual user IDs and email addresses to see granular behavioral analytics.
Userpilot’s in-app events
Tracking and analyzing event data gives you a better understanding of user behavior so you can capitalize on opportunities to improve the in-app experience.
Here are the ways you can use Userpilot as an event-tracking tool:
- Event tracking: The Userpilot flow builder lets you track custom events by tagging individual features (Feature Tag), by API (called Tracked Events) or by setting them up using a combination of feature tags and tracked events (Custom Events).
- Feature tags: Userpilot’s no-code feature tagger lets you track important features/elements based on different interaction types (clicks, hovers, and text inputs). You can then display the engagement and performance of different features through heatmaps.
- Data integrations: Userpilot has native integrations with popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, and more. This makes it possible to sync your event data across multiple tools within your tech stack.
Userpilot’s feature tags
Tracking feature adoption is essential to identify under-utilized features and push users toward discovering them. Userpilot lets you tag features without writing any code, track adoption through engagement analytics, and visualize feature usage with heatmaps.
Here’s how you can use Userpilot to conduct feature audits and drive feature adoption:
- No-code tagging: Userpilot’s no-code feature tagger lets you add tags through the Chrome extension’s visual builder. You’ll also be able to select whether the tag should track clicks, hovers, or text inputs from users to get contextual data that reflects actual feature usage.
- Feature tags: The advanced feature analytics of Userpilot lets you track feature performance trends, see the top 20 features across your user base, and see granular data for individual features. You’ll also be able to filter your data by segment, company, or time period.
- Usage heatmaps: Userpilot heatmaps show you the features/elements with the most interactions. Heatmaps can be generated on the Features & Events dashboard by clicking on a tagged feature, editing it in the builder, and then clicking the heatmap icon on the bottom toolbar.
Userpilot’s user journey mapping
User journey mapping helps you visualize all the interactions between users and your product as they try to achieve a particular goal. Userpilot’s detailed user analytics and funnel/trend reports help you track customers as they progress through different stages of their journey.
Here are the Userpilot features you can use for user journey mapping:
- User analytics: The Users dashboard provides detailed analytics of your entire customer base. You’ll be able to sort by segment, company, or time period and add multiple filters to help you narrow results. You can also perform bulk actions and export user data in a CSV format.
- Funnel reports: These reports help you visualize the user journey map by showing which stage, page, or action most users get stuck on. You’ll also be able to view breakdowns so you can see how the user journey changes depending on which OS, browser, or device type a user is on.
- Trend reports: Userpilot’s trend reports offer behavioral insights such as how often users perform a specific action, the number of unique users who take that action, and where in the user journey these actions occur. You can also create custom metrics and build your own charts.
Userpilot’s user segmentation analysis
User segmentation is a key part of building a contextual onboarding experience for new customers. Userpilot lets you segment your customers when they meet specific conditions, filter through analytics using user attributes, and trigger flows for users in different segments.
Here are some of Userpilot’s customer segmentation capabilities:
- Conditional Segments: Userpilot lets you build segments for users who match conditions on what device/browser/OS they’re using, which country they live in, what their NPS score is, and any custom events they’ve performed. You can then use these segments as filters/triggers.
- Analytics Filters: The product analytics and user insights dashboards on Userpilot can be set to only show data from certain user segments or companies. This makes it possible to identify actionable insights from specific user cohorts and benchmark performance between segments.
- Flow Triggers: Userpilot audience settings make it possible to target in-app flows to certain user segments or only show flows to users who meet specific conditions. You could also add event-based or page-specific triggers to show relevant flows with contextual timing.
What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?
Userpilot pros
As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
- UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot, such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
- Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
- Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
- Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
- A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
- Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
- Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
- Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
- Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
- Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.
Userpilot’s cons
Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:
- Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
- Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
- Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.
What do users say about Userpilot?
Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:
I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.
What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.
Source: G2.
Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:
“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”
Source: G2.
Userpilot’s pricing
Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.
Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.
Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:
- Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, user feedback, and customization.
- Growth: The Growth plan starts at $499/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).
Conclusion
There you have it.
It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Lou Assist is your go-to option for user behavior analysis. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.
If you’re looking for a better alternative to Lou Assist for user behavior analysis, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!
Looking for a Better Alternative for User Behavior Analysis? Try Userpilot
